Discovering a Traitor
by Carolanne Clark
Summary: Spoilers up through 2008: A Space Owen. This is an explanation of the strange and strategic actions Harold performed in said episode. How the heck was he, the deluded dork, the one to discover a traitor in their midst? And how did he get voted off?


**Welcome to my first, humble, Total Drama fanfic.**

**This story was created for three reasons. One, I was extremely confused by Harold's actions in 2008: A Space Owen. I mean, how the heck was he able to find out about Owen's traitorous position _just_ because he was the only one unaccounted for when the window was broken? Two, I had a lot of time on my hands. And finally, three, I had that itch in my brain that every author has, driving us all to write something.**

**As expected, this story has spoilers all the way through 2008: A Space Owen. If you're in Canada, haven't seen this episode, and don't want to be spoiled, don't say I didn't warn you.**

**This is simply my explanation of Harold's strange and strategic actions in that episode. I'm specifically leaving out a few parts, like Beth kissing him, because his thoughts and reasoning were properly revealed in those situations. Don't worry that I've cut out the first six or seven minutes of the episode; there's still a bunch of juicy moments I've left in.  
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**Reviews are both encouraged and enjoyed. They not only motivate me to write more for all of you, but they also help me improve as an author. So, I'll not only be putting up more TD fanfics, but better TD fanfics.**

**I don't own the show. Otherwise, Harold would be winning. I also don't make money from this fanfic. I'm just posting this little story for the enjoyment of avid fanfic readers like myself. Since there are obviously no legal violations, let's get started!

* * *

**

I missed LeShawna.

I didn't feel that way for no reason, though. Right now, we were in one of the few challenges where people were actually having _fun._ Duncan was testing out what it was like to sleep upside-down, Beth was chilling and sucking on her ring off to the side, and Owen was eagerly chasing after a floating sandwich.

LeShawna could make any challenge I went through seem fun. Her strong, sensible personality and infectious optimism would just…melt the torture away. She had made my time at the film lot bearable, and in more than one way. She inspired me to do my best. She kept my mood up and joyous, even in the most depressing of defeats. And, it didn't hurt that her presence had seriously impaired Duncan's ability to pull pranks on me.

And I had voted her off.

I felt a slight wave of tears rush to my eyes. Come on, Harold, keep it together, you can't look like a total idiot in front of these guys…

"Boy, you have it good, Beth," Owen said as his attempts to catch up with the sandwich brought him near her. "Your snack is stuck to your finger, so you don't have to go chasing after it."

"Just one of the many plusses of being a kept woman!" Beth replied happily.

A tiny twitch of movement from Duncan drew my gaze to him. He had opened his eyes, and was staring directly at me. A smirk played across his face. Owen said something back to Beth, but Duncan had captured my attention.

He knew, he knew how much losing LeShawna had hurt me. He knew that Beth's words of being 'kept' were digging a knife between my ribs. He knew that, any second, a seemingly-innocent comment would break me into tears.

I glared right back at Duncan. He thought I was pathetic for being attached to someone who was gone from the game, maybe gone from my life as well. I'd have to give him a reason to think otherwise. I started kick-pedaling with my feet, slowly propelling myself past Beth and Owen.

"I think you're making a mistake, being exclusive to one guy," I began, keeping my voice calm, steady, and matter-of-fact. "Why tie yourself down when you can keep playing the field, like _moi?" _

My gaze flicked back to Duncan. He was now giving me that tough, slightly-puzzled look that was his way of trying to cover up a gape of confusion.

I heard Beth giggle. My eyes flew towards her, and I saw that she was trying to use her non-ring hand to cover up a smile. I quickly reviewed my comment, and realized that she might have interpreted it a little oddly. Gosh, I hope she didn't get the wrong idea about me. I, truthfully, was not interested in her. Besides, I had my lady fans to think about. LeShawna would have been crushed if I started going out with another girl. And oh-ho, don't even get me started on what Heather would have probably done.

* * *

I was woken from my slumber by a loud, whining siren and flashing light.

I jerked awake. My mind went from pleasant, peaceful sleep into startled, fight-or-flight panic.

"This is Houston, and you have a problem," Chris announced over the PA system. "You've been hit by an asteroid, and your guidance system is toast!" Really? We were on a roller coaster. How could we be hit by a stray piece of space junk when we weren't even in space?

Still, if we didn't solve this 'crisis', Chris would probably use it as an excuse to throw our coaster car off the track and into a dangerous crash-landing.

"What do we do? What do we do?" Owen shouted, in a slightly deluded panic. He was probably still slightly asleep.

"I just saw this in Race to Save Space 3," I stated, having to raise my voice over the sirens. This exact same situation had happened in the movie; everyone was sleeping, then they got hit by a stray asteroid that knocked out their auto-pilot capabilities. "We have to manually override the navigation system."

"Quick, someone move the joystick thingy," Duncan ordered. Uh, duh. That's what happened in the movie too.

Duncan, instead of going up to the control station himself, took the opportunity to grab me and toss me over there. Seriously, what did that accomplish? I got there faster, but it took me much longer to grab the joystick in mid-flight and stabilize myself enough to move the controls.

As soon as the joystick clicked to the right, the sirens stopped. Thank goodness.

"Way to go Harold!" Beth congratulated.

Courtney was clapping. "Nice job!"

I smirked. It was nice to be appreciated for once.

Looking up at Duncan, I saw that he was smiling. Actually smiling. At me!

Did he even remember what I did to him last episode? I punched his lights out and left his unconscious body at the top of a mountain. Granted, it was his fault for teaching me how to fight, but he hadn't said a word about the fight. At all. It was a bit suspicious, actually. Did I accidently deliver some amnesia with my blow?

The sickening shatter of glass interrupted my thoughts.

The sirens and red flashing lights came back on. "Uh-oh! Looks like you've got a hole in your fuselage!" Chris chimed in. Then he laughed, our misfortune being the greatest joy of his present life. "You have exactly T-minus ten minutes to plug the hole, or you'll run out of precious oxygen."

Great. Even more danger. Except, this one actually had a bit of realism behind it. While we wouldn't run out of oxygen, having an open hole in our hull was pretty dangerous. Especially if someone fell asleep and accidentally got sucked out of it.

As an example, Duncan's pillow, with Public Enemy Number One strapped onto it, began floating dangerously close to the breach. Duncan quickly maneuvered himself to the window and managed to grab his pet before it flew out the broken hole.

"There there, Scruffy," he consoled his deadly friend. "I got you, little buddy."

"We have to plug the hole!" I announced, taking charge once again. In Race to Save Space 2, which I had also seen, the hull of the ship had been damaged by a rogue comet. The astronauts had to seal the resulting holes with large slabs of fun-foam. Unfortunately, we didn't have that kind of technological genius at our disposal. "Quick, find something big and form-fitting. Hefty yet pliable!"

The irony of my statement hit me. Yes, we did have something like that in the ship, and he could easily fix our problem. We all looked over to Owen.

"What?" he asked, completely oblivious to our idea. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Beth and Courtney glanced at each other, a victorious smile on their lips. "Girl alliance?" Courtney offered.

"Girl alliance," Beth confirmed.

Okay, it was confirmed that those two had an actual alliance. I hadn't really been sure of their situation in that last round. From my view of things, they both looked like they were trying to fake a friendship with each other. I'd have to watch my back for those two. But, Courtney had promised me a slot in the final four, so I was pretty much safe. For this round.

Courtney and Beth spent the next three minutes chasing Owen into a corner, grabbing him, and stuffing him into the hole in the window. Somehow, his body fat made the perfect sealant, and the obnoxious windy noise of the open window ceased.

The alarms stopped. "Great! You've plugged the hole using…Owen's butt. Weird. See you in the morning!" Chris announced. Then there was silence.

I glanced at Owen. Sure enough, the two girls had crammed Owen's behind into the fuselage breach and it form-fitted the hole with an airtight seal.

Everyone looked at each other. Now what?

I, personally, had been woken up all too suddenly by the asteroid, and then the broken window had made things worse. Adrenaline was still coursing through my veins, keeping me awake, sensitive, and alert with a keen sharpness. That was its job in the human body, after all. However, it was going to keep me from falling asleep for a while.

Courtney and Beth had started talking, Beth licking her "promise" ring every other sentence. Duncan was busy stroking his evil pet. Those two were certainly having fun with their new gifts. Hmm, maybe I could have a bit of fun with my present from home as well. Yeah, zero-G nun chuck tricks!

Strangely, I couldn't find my nun chucks. I had set them in the corner of the ship before falling asleep, but they weren't there anymore. I searched the entire ride, but they had magically disappeared. I even checked in all the weird, around-the-corner nooks and crannies, where it was incredibly unlikely that my favorite Japanese weapon could have floated there.

I finally decided to ask for a little help. "Hey, Owen," I called out. He looked up. "Have you seen my nun chucks anywhere recently?"

Owen suddenly glanced at the floor and tapped his fingers together nervously. "No, nope. Certainly didn't see them. I didn't touch them or use them in any way either. Heh heh. Honest! I'm telling the truth. You can trust me!"

Oookay. What was with him? He was probably a just little nervous and uncomfortable. Who wouldn't be, having their butt used as fun-foam?

Still, there was still the issue of my nun chucks. Where could they have gone? It's not like they could have left the ship-

Or maybe they could have!

They had been accounted for before I went to sleep. Then they were gone after there was a hole in the fuselage. But, there was only about a second's worth of time for the nun chucks to float out the window before we all looked over to the scene of the disaster. It was highly unlikely that my present just happened to be that close to the window.

Unless, the nun chucks had busted the window _themselves_!

But, it was also unlikely that random floating would cause the weapons to suddenly smash a secure slab of glass. That meant that _someone used the nun chucks_…to _specifically smash_ the window, and put us all in danger!

Who would do that?

Chris, obviously…but no one else in here would perform that deed for his reasons. Chris wanted drama. The rest of us wanted to take drama out of the equation, period. We'd had enough of it to last a lifetime.

This was just like the detective challenge. I would've totally won that, by the way, if Duncan's hair hadn't fudged my predictions.

The crime: someone smashed the window. The means: my nun chucks, which could have been floating in a reachable area. The motive: …who had a motive?

Beth was pretty innocent. So was Owen. Duncan might have tried to throw my nun chucks out the window to get back at me for beating him senseless, an unjust but possible reasoning. And Courtney, she might have made the hole to scare and spite us all.

I'd narrowed it down to two people. Now, who had the _opportunity_ to smash the window and do away with my present?

Not me, obviously. I had been attached to the joystick. I was looking at Duncan when the glass broke, and I didn't see him trying anything funny. He could be ruled out as a suspect. That left Courtney as the only motivated person who could have trashed the window.

So, Courtney, while everyone was distracted with my heroic accomplishments, had seen my nun chucks floating near the window. This had given her the idea that maybe she could make us panic a bit. She busted the window with my weapon, then threw it out the hole to cover her tracks.

…and then went right on to seal the hole with Owen's butt. She'd fixed her own problem.

Nothing made any sense. Hey, I was still a bit lacking in sleep. My mad skills, including my incredible mystery-solving ones, always lost a bit of their shine when I was low on rest. Maybe a good nigh…I mean, a few hour's, worth of shut-eye would allow me to solve this perplexing problem.

I found my pillow and tried to get a bit of sleep, but the damage was already done. The adrenaline, along with my myriad of questions about my nun chucks's fate, kept my mind running at a million miles an hour. I maybe got about five seconds of sleep before the ride came to a sudden halt.

* * *

Duncan grabbed the front of my shirt, déjà vu, and lifted me off the ground. He glared at me with the burning anger of a million nuclear missiles. You know, it wasn't my fault for accidentally crushing the deadly arachnid in the Vomit Comet. It was Duncan's fault for being an irresponsible pet owner and letting that beast hitch a ride on me.

"Give me one good reason not to beat you to a pul – AHHH!" His angry threats were interrupted by a strange exclamation of pain. That was possibly the luckiest thing to happen in my life, ever! Well, except for LeShawna finding that first haiku that I accidentally dropped outside of the Gopher cabin while spying on her.

"Yes!" I exclaimed. "I knew my mind powers would kick in when I needed them most."

"It's that stupid mattress," Duncan explained. Well, still, it was a pretty lucky incident that my vengeful prank chose that particular moment to strike. "I still have a stabbing pain in my back."

"Who stabbed you in the back? It wasn't me," Owen began. "I'm a good guy, not some dirty backstabber, I swear. You gotta believe me!"

We all gave him weirded-out looks. What was wrong with him? He was one of the most trustworthy guys I knew. He was fun, loose, and never got involved in the nasty, dark side of the game, where backstabbing and skullduggery ruled and traitors were as common as dirt. And, he had no reason to doubt that we thought this way about him.

Unless, he did something really bad, and that something was eating away at him.

My mind instinctively floated back to the incident on the ship. My nun chucks. Owen had acted really weird when I asked him about them. Did…he steal them and wreck the window?

Maybe. But this made it apparent that he wasn't the trustworthy person we all assumed him to be. Why would he suddenly change and become a filthy backstabber?

What questionable things had Owen done recently? Possibly stole my nun chucks. Tried to get me to kick Duncan's butt. Sneaked out of the film lot. Lied about why he sneaked out of the film lot. Acted strange when Chris accused him of sneaking out of the film lot. Had Chris help him in climbing up the wall…he tried to act casual and hide his slight cheating, but it was still quite easy to notice.

Chris had been helping him a bit over these past few rounds. Owen got out of that last challenge, in all respects.

How did Owen even get back on the show, again? He sued. Owen was not the type of guy to sue. Heck, he wasn't even the type of guy to hold a grudge, or even get mad!

Throughout my process of thought, a tiny idea was emerging in my brain. Every variable I reasoned through simply added to its clarity until I was left with a hypothesis: Chris bribed Owen back onto the show, maybe with the prospects of free food. Owen was now Chris's agent, and it was his responsibility to cause as much drama as possible. Manipulate the remaining competitors. Stir us all up until we were all at each others' throats, providing the ratings-spiking drama that Chris craved.

But, my hypothesis hung on one tiny thread. Did Owen steal my nun chucks, giving us a reason to doubt his trustworthiness? This was the element that fed my reasoning process. If my suspicions of Owen stealing my present were true, then Chris's plot with Owen was also likely to be true. If not, then the reasoning fell apart, and Owen was probably just in a really weird situation.

I'd need to do some calculations before the vote came up.

* * *

Night had fallen. Dinner was just over, and it was about twenty minutes until the Awards Ceremony. The only light in the area was the wavering of a small fire outside of the trailers.

Me and Duncan were sitting on a nearby log bench. I had a notepad in one hand, pencil in the other, trying to scribble out a diagram. Owen had yet to leave the crafts-services tent, so he was probably still gorging away. Courtney and Beth? Yelling and screaming at each other in the girls' trailer. That fight wasn't going to end pretty.

I tried to ignore the sounds of conflict, sketching away at my notepad. I'd drawn a rough estimation of the shape of the zero-gravity ride and marked off a spot on the right side where the window had been broken. My main purpose in this was to figure out who had been closest to the window at the time of the crime. I drew a small circle way up in the front of the ride, then labeled it 'H', to stand for myself. I had seen Duncan face-to-face in that moment, so I was able to draw his circle and label it, too.

That left Beth, Courtney, and Owen. I wasn't looking directly at them, so I had no exact idea of where they were. My peripheral vision had told me that they were on the right side of the ship, somewhat between me and the door. I drew a light outline of that area. Maybe, I could question a few of my fellow contestants later about exactly where everyone was positioned.

The noise in the girls' trailer suddenly crescendoed. I looked back at the racket to discover that the trailer was actually rocking back and forth with the force of the fight. Woah. They were both having a really bad day.

I heard the sound of something breaking from inside the war zone. "Wow, those girls are really going at it in there," I stated to Duncan.

"Yeah," he agreed, turning to me. "It's the astro-hot vs. the astro-not. I love a good cat fight!"

"I too love a good cat fight," I agreed. "But one with real cats, who wear tiny boxing gloves."

Duncan cocked and eyebrow and leaned as far away from me as possible. Oh well. He probably wasn't into that kind of thing anyways.

I looked back at my notepad. The situation at hand reeled its way back into my head.

"Uh, Duncan, I need a bit of help with some calculations," I admitted, glancing up at him.

He flattened his visage into a slightly sarcastic form. "Yeah, ask the guy who's always at juvie instead of school, and couldn't care less about what calculus is."

"It's a different kind of calculation," I began to explain. "My nun chucks went missing in the roller coaster ride today, and I'm trying to figure out where they went." I showed him my notepad sketch. "I'm mapping out exactly where everyone was at the fuselage malfunction, so I can determine the suspects in who could have taken it."

Accusing someone of taking my nun chucks? Understandable. Accusing someone of breaking the window? Best not to mention. Accusing someone of being an agent for Chris? Out of the question. I would let everyone know of the big crimes when I had solid evidence for this one particular criminal. But, for now, it was better to stick to the small issues.

Duncan gave the drawing a weird look. "Since when would anyone try to steal your stupid toy?" he asked rhetorically.

"It's not a toy!...but I don't know. That's what I'm trying to find out. Do you know exactly where Courtney, Beth, and Owen were floating?"

Duncan narrowed his eyes and peered at my diagram. He pointed a finger at a spot in the front of the ship, far from the broken window.

"Courtney's there," he stated. He poked a spot slightly down and left of his girlfriend's position. "And there's Beth."

I took a pencil to my notepad again, delicately tracing the small circles that could have been Courtney and Beth. "You looked at them? This is exactly where they were?"

"As sure as I can get," he admitted. "The only other way is to ask those girls, but I don't think they're accepting visitors."

His remark was punctuated when Courtney decided it a good time to release an ear-throbbing screech. The two of us shielded our ears, surprised that one girl could produce a sound of that many decibels.

When the agony was over, I tried to resume the conversation. "So, do you know where Owen was?"

He looked up in thought for a few moments before answering. "Not too sure about him. I think he was here," he gestured to a generic area between the girls and the window, "but he could have been somewhere else."

Then it hit me: Duncan was actually helping me out. What was with him, lately? First he offered to team up with me in the kung fu challenge, and now he was assisting me in unmasking a traitor? Well, scratch that, Duncan thought he was helping my find my nun chucks instead, but still.

"Thanks, Duncan," I said. After Duncan and Courtney conveniently managed to forget how my mad skills helped them out in TDI, I'd resolved to always thank Duncan and Courtney whenever they gave me some assistance. The plan was to try to start a positive feedback cycle so they would feel a little better towards me and hopefully offer forgiveness on that whole Courtney-cheated-off thing.

That attempt had failed a round ago. But I wasn't scared to try again.

"No prob. You would have done the same for me and…Scruffy." Duncan's eyes lost their focus for a few brief moments. He absentmindedly brought a hand up to rub his right temple. Right where I'd wailed on him a few days ago.

Then, his gaze came back to full focus, and along with it, his eyebrow creased down into an angry V. "You punched me! We had a truce!" he accused loudly, pointing a finger into my nose. Maybe I'd accidentally concussed him on that mountain, and the recent flow of dialogue had been similar enough to those events that he remembered I'd beaten him up?

I edged away from him, farther down the log seat. I may have been able to knock him out cold once, but that was only when his guard was down. I had no intention of being crushed into a censor-inducing pulp by a vengeful Duncan. So, I decided to keep my jaw clamped shut as well.

Duncan stood up, clenching his fists at his sides. "You, are gonna pay. You can punch me all you want. Heck, I've broken enough alliances to give you some slack with it." He leaned down, threateningly holding a fist up to my face. "But no one can do all that and then decide to kill my Scruffy. You're dead meat, Doris."

With that, he left the fire circle and headed off in the direction of the Awards Ceremony.

Hmm. The vote-off was actually coming up in around ten minutes.

How was I going to prove Owen was a sneak, in ten minutes? My entire suspicion of him was nothing more than that: a suspicion. There was no hard, solid proof that any of us had purposefully trashed the window, let alone Owen. There wasn't even any way to prove Owen was an agent for Chris. With Duncan and Courtney convinced that I was a pathetic dork, it would take some really convincing evidence to prove to them that we had a mole in our midst.

And the only kind of evidence I could possibly obtain was a confession. But how was I going to get that in ten – probably nine by now – minutes? Even more so, how was I going to get a confession while everyone else was watching? How was I going to get a confession at all?

It was obvious that the guilt was eating Owen up from the inside, like a black fungus slowly leaching out of his innards and through his skin. He had been acting a little off for the past few days. He wasn't as happy as he used to be. Perhaps I could play off of the part of Owen that had trouble lying and concealing and tricking. Maybe I could use his guilt and nervousness to coerce him into fracturing and breaking down.

I was normally a nice guy. But I had no tolerance for traitors, or people who lied to your face and lost no sleep over it.

"Yo yo, what's up, H-man?" Owen said to me as he walked near the campfire. He had probably just gotten out of the crafts-services tent, and was now making his way to the Awards Ceremony.

This attack would have to come hard and fast. "What's it to you, traitor?"

Owen's eyes grew wide. Gotcha.

He tried to compose himself, tugging on his t-shirt collar. "What are you talking about? Who's a traitor, if that's even a real word?" I was right! He _was_ betraying us. These words were obviously just cover-up. Now was my time to blow through his defenses and drag that confession out of him.

"I've been doing some calculations," I started. "And you were the only person not accounted for at the time of the fuselage malfunction. Care to tell me where you were?"

His face twisted into a grimace. Then he farted. Great…

"You can't fart your way out of this one, Owen!" I exclaimed, standing him up and facing him down. I had to get him to confess, somehow…how? "Feeling guilty about something?" I asked.

Owen put on a look of extreme guilt, and then began to fart constantly. Maybe his gas was released whenever he was feeling particularly tense. Anyway, I watched for a few seconds as a cloud of noxious green fumes slowly rose up around me. The fumes were now causing my eyes to water.

Then, like all mortal humans, I was forced to breathe. It may have been only a tiny inhalation, but even the smallest toxic whiff set my nose on fire. I couldn't take it anymore!

"Oh man, I'm sorry I asked!" I cried out, fleeing the deadly farts and running away from the fire circle.

When I stopped, I noticed I was near the make-up confessional. Perfect! This was a great time for unleashing a bit of steam. Owen, now revealed as some of the lowest scum on the planet, had not only resisted confession, but almost poisoned me with his noxious farts.

I took a step towards the confessional-

Bam! Slammed into the ground.

I groaned, wondering what the heck had tripped me. It couldn't have been Duncan, he was at the ceremony. I cautiously stood up, looking back at the round, shiny object that had assaulted my balance.

I picked it up. Surprisingly, it was Owen's 'Citizen of the School Year" award. Hah, like he deserved that. He was the last person I would have called 'trusting' or 'honest'. Well, besides Duncan, he was a given.

And, if he destroyed my present, then it was only fair for me to destroy his.

Taking the trophy with me, I dashed into the confessional.

* * *

I'd figured out how all the voting would go shortly after leaving the confessional.

Beth, still mad from the cat fight, would naturally vote for Courtney.

Duncan, still mad about his evil beast of a pet, would naturally vote for me.

Courtney had promised to take me to the final four with her. She wasn't going to vote for me. But, she also wasn't about to vote off her boyfriend either. Since Beth was invincible, there was only one choice left: Owen.

I was voting for Owen, of course. That little traitor didn't deserve to be here.

Owen's vote was a little harder to predict. But, I was counting on his good conscience to work for me. Owen had been trying to vote off Courtney since he came back to the game. Hopefully, he would do the same this round and resist the choice to vote me off to cover his own tracks. Besides, even if he did vote for me, the result would be a tie; two votes him, two votes me. Chris would order the issue to be resolved by the only odd voter, Beth. Due to her sudden and recent infatuation, she would refuse to eliminate me, sending Owen on his way.

The weasel was going home. Sure, I didn't have the chance to tell everyone that he was a traitor, but did it really matter, when he was the next to board the Lame-o-Sine?

"Bye bye, traitor," I mumbled as I pressed Owen's button on the voting device.

After everyone voted, Chris began throwing us our foil chocolates.

"Beth," he called, tossing her the chocolate statue. "Owen…Duncan…"

That left Courtney in the bottom two, along with…me???

This couldn't be! Only the two with the most votes were the ones put in the bottom two. I'd received one vote from Duncan, but Owen had received at least two. I'd only gotten one. At least, I _should _have gotten one-

No, no, no…

I covered my ears, knowing that I was going home, that Courtney was getting the final statue, but unable to bare the reality of the words. This couldn't be happening, she'd promised me…

I then realized how much of a fool I had been, trusting that Owen's conscience would be enough to save my hide!

"Courtney," Chris called. I heard it, even through my hands. "Sorry, Harold, your Lame-O-Sine awaits."

I gasped, looking around. Owen voted for me, Duncan voted for me, but Courtney voted for Owen, right? Obviously, wrong.

Suddenly, the world halted, and a prevailing sense of logic was injected into my brain. Of course. Courtney's main agitation and threat in the game, at the present moment, was Beth. Beth was crushing on me. If I was eliminated, then Beth would be, well, crushed. Courtney had not only expected, but was relying, on Duncan's spite vote to get me kicked off. She knew that I still believed in her promise and would avoid trying to vote her off.

I let the disappointment wash onto my face as I stood up. I was an idiot to think that I could trust Courtney, or Owen. I really _did_ have a bad record of trusting the people who could not be trusted. Heather, LeShawna, Justin, and now this!

I let my feet slowly trudge my body to the Lame-O-Sine. This was what I deserved by playing in the risky game of traitors and liars.

Apparently, my melancholy pace was too slow for some of the remaining contestants. "Get on with it, Doris," Duncan shouted from behind me. He just had to get the last word in, didn't he? Something inside me shifted; my depression was suddenly converted into hot annoyance and anger, like bubbly chemical reaction.

I couldn't just let him walk over me like that. LeShawna told me to stand up for myself, and I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction that he'd killed my spirit.

So, I quickly turned back, racing as fast as I could towards Duncan. His visage expressed confusion until I ran around behind him, grabbed his shorts, and pantsed him. You see that, Mr. I've-made-the-final-four-thrice? Have a taste of your own medicine for once.

Of course, Chef had seen me running and snatched me up as soon as I committed the act. Duncan glanced down, surprised at the sight of his underwear for a few seconds, before stating, "I probably had that coming."

Okay. I'd gotten my revenge on Duncan. Now what? As Chef continued to carry me away, my brain slowly realized what an injustice this was. Duncan was a worthless bully. Courtney was a spoiled brat. Owen was a traitor, plain and simple. Beth was better than the other three, but she still chased after _two_ different boys in this game, while having a boyfriend back home, and dumping said boyfriend just so she could cling onto me. I was the only one here who held any decent sense of morals, who stuck true to my girl, and who gave everyone a second chance, a third chance in some cases!

"Fifth place?! But Owen's the traitor!" I shouted, the unfairness of it all piercing my body and rushing out my mouth. "You gotta watch that guy like a hawk!"

Chef threw me into the Lame-O-Sine just as I remembered that I didn't particularly like that phrase, as hawks definitely did not have the sharpest vision of the raptor families. I stuck my head out the window to yell out another remark. "No, wait, a falcon, their eyesight is way superior!" I corrected.

"Goodbye, Harold!" Beth yelled, waving at me. "I'll wait for you!"

I inwardly groaned. Beth and her petty fight with Courtney had partially gotten me into this mess. And, her sudden, strange, attraction to me was also one of the crucial factors that caused Courtney to vote me off. "Haven't I suffered enough?" I exclaimed.

"Hey, kid," the limousine-driver called to me. "Get in and roll up the window, would ya? I need to get you out of here before Chris starts complaining."

I sighed, pulling my head back into the limo and pressing the little switch that rolled my window up. No matter how hard I tried, Duncan still managed to outlast me. And, this time, he managed to drag his girlfriend along too! The Traitor, if he really was Chris's not-so-little agent, would probably be next assigned to break that couple apart. And, strangely, I couldn't feel sorry for either of them. But, I did feel sorry for Beth, how her easily-swayed love interests managed to fall at the wrong place at the wrong time, not only getting me kicked off and humiliated, but also forcing her to trade a trustworthy, reliable boyfriend for someone who didn't even like her that way.

Suddenly, the limo roared forward, pressing me up against the cushy seat and compressing at my lungs. What the heck was that guy doing?

After a few seconds, he slowed down, gradual enough as to not pitch me forward through the limousine. "Sorry, kid," he told me. "Chris wanted me to tear up road on this limo for a special-effects-thing he wanted to do. Sorry if I startled ya."

"It's fine, don't bother paying attention to the dork," I replied, not realizing that my voice was too vitriolic until the words left my lips.

The driver let loose a long, low whistle. "Tough elimination, huh?"

"Tell me about it."

* * *

**I hope that wasn't too bad. **

**So, anyways, I'd enjoy a review, and maybe I'll start putting up more stories on here.**


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